


So Nearly Free

by fallendarlings



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Nothing is fine and everything hurts, Russian Sleep Experiment, and I headcanon bucky in it, basically this is my favorite urban legend, bc of course there is angst who do you think i am, enjoy i guess, i don't know how to tag this i'm sorry, im pretty sure im the only person to come up with this idea, little bit of graphic descriptions of violence and gore, lots and lots of angst, no happy ending, so yay for originality bitches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 13:19:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7642096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallendarlings/pseuds/fallendarlings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Soldier was told that it was a mission. He must stay awake for thirty days and at the end, if he did not fail the mission, he would be rewarded. He didn't believe them. The Soldier was never rewarded. However, he knew nothing but missions and if he was assigned one, he would complete it. The Soldier never failed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Nearly Free

**Author's Note:**

> yes i believe the Russian Sleep Experiment legend is true and yes i headcanon Bucky as part of it. here is what happened. 
> 
> not beta'd, all mistakes are my own. I tried to keep as close to the original creepypasta as possible but i did change some things of course to fit the headcanon.

The Soldier was told that it was a mission. He must stay awake for thirty days and at the end, if he did not fail the mission, he would be rewarded. He didn't believe them. The Soldier was never rewarded. However, he knew nothing but missions and if he was assigned one, he would complete it. The Soldier never failed. 

He was put into a chamber with four other men. They told him their names, though he did not care, told him they were prisoners of war that had been kept for a long time after the fighting had ended, assumed dead by all those they loved. One of the men recognized him, called him by a name he did not know, asked if he had heard about the Captain. The Soldier ignored him, settling on one of the bare cots in the room. They hadn't given him any weapons, had told him he didn't need them for this particular mission. He always needed weapons, but he could make do without them. The other men were unarmed as well, in addition to being weak and underfed. They attacked the food rations in the corner the moment the chamber was sealed. He could kill them all with his bare hands in under a minute. Weapons were a necessary luxury that he would just have to do without. 

The mission instructions hadn't called for him to kill the others, however, so he stayed where he was. Docile, but ready. The moment the gas started filtering in, he sensed it, could smell the difference in the air. His muscles tensed. He had been briefed that the room was going to be gassed to aid him in completion of the mission, yet some instinct he couldn't remember having told him this was how prisoners were tortured to death. He wasn't a prisoner, however. He was the Asset. The most prized possession. 

Hours passed where he didn't move, didn't sleep, didn't say anything. On the second day, the others began talking. The men settled down and started swapping war stories. The man who had recognized him the first day was the one who brought it all back. 

He- his name was Gilmore Hodge- settled on the edge of The Soldier's cot and asked, "Sergeant Barnes? Word was around camp that you knew the Captain when he was that skinny fella that bested us all in basic."

The soldier looked at the other man sharply. His head hurt, distorted images and faces flooding through his memory. "What did you just call me?"

"Sergeant James Barnes? We were in the 107th before you joined the Howlies. Always buddied up to Captain America, you were."

"Captain America." The soldier repeated. Stubborn blue eyes and a strong jaw. Dressed up like a god damn target. Always giving The Soldier one heart attack after another. And he couldn't put his finger on it, exactly, but the images suddenly called to the surface of a memory he didn't know he had, made his whole body tense up. He grasped Hodge firmly with his metal hand, tight enough to cause a wince. "Who is Captain America?"

"Um. Jesus, you must have really bad amnesia. Captain America...your best friend. Steve Rogers." Hodge pulled away from The Soldier's rapidly slackening grip. "Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers, the double trouble force to be reckoned with? Half the guys thought you were queer for each other but no one said anything."

The Soldier shoved Hodge off his cot, the guy's ass hitting the floor hard. "Don't talk to me." He whispered hoarsely. He drew his knees up to his chest and rested his forehead on them, inundated by foggy memories that hurt so badly to bring to the surface, but he couldn't stop them from coming. And as the memories came, so did his voice. Hodge didn't say anything to him, but he hovered nearby, listening intently to the disjointed stories that The Soldier couldn't keep from telling. "Steve was nine years old when we officially met for the first time. I had wanted to talk to him for a long time, always watching him across the school playground but Mama had told me not to talk to the boys who caused trouble and Stevie was always getting in fights. This time he had pissed off a bunch of the eighth graders for trying to sneak peeks up the girls' skirts and he told them all off. He was a tiny ball of righteous anger and he could never win but he picked the fight anyway. I was always big for my age and I had been helping my pa lift crates down at the docks all summer so I had more muscles than anyone reckoned a ten year old would have. As soon as the older boys started in on Steve, I waded right into that fight and gave them all bloody noses. Steve came home with me for supper that night and we were inseparable since."

There was a weird nostalgia in him with the memories, a feeling he couldn't quite name. Fondness, homesickness, something else. His mind was still too scrambled to tell. Hodge had said he was Sergeant James Barnes before, but no matter the images in his head or the words in his mouth, he couldn't really remember being anything but The Soldier. 

"Steve's ma was a nurse in the TB ward. It was a wonder she lasted as long as she did. She was always just as small and frail as her son. She liked me a lot, Sarah Rogers. Told me once that before I came along, Steve was always so angry and unhappy at everything in the world. But I was something that meant enough to make him smile and laugh. Yeah, he still fought, but nowhere near as often as before. And when he did, I did my best to be right there at his side. My ma was none too happy about that, but she liked Steve so she put up with it. We became something of a legend in the neighborhood. All the shopkeepers knew us. I remember Mrs. O'Malley would always say _oh, there go Rogers and Barnes again. Always out looking for trouble_. But she'd always pay us in more candy than we could eat whenever we would help her unload crates and stock shelves and whenever Steve was sick and I'd go into the store to buy something to make him a broth with, she'd always ask what was ailing him this time and when I wasn't looking, she'd slip the medicine he needed but no one could afford into the bag and send me on my way. Mrs. O'Malley was a saint and she was always scolding the girls who didn't look twice at Steve for not seeing what they were missing. Steve tried to act put out that none of the dames wanted to step out with him, but I don't think it bothered him really. He'd always say he didn't want to marry a girl just to leave her a widow." The Soldier gripped the edge of the cot so tightly the metal dented. "And then he got big and Agent Carter was there looking at him with stars in her eyes." He cast a long look at Hodge who was nodding his head at the story, his eyes wide. "I never liked Agent Carter. Not one bit. Kind of hated her, matter of fact. I finally got Steve back and nothing was like it was before. His attention was all on the fighting and dark hair and red lipstick. We weren't RogersandBarnes anymore, we were The Commanding Officers and Oh Yeah Is The Captain's Buddy Still Here?" He sighed, running his flesh fingers through his hair. "But Steve did love Peggy. Did he ever marry her?" He gave Hodge a hard stare, not sure why he was asking but desperately needing to know the answer for reasons he didn't understand. 

"Uh." Hodge gulped. "Sergeant, two days after you fell from Zola's train-"

"Zola." The Soldier spat the word. "I hated him too. He's the reason I'm in this mess, you know. But it's good that Steve and Peggy got together. Steve should be happy." He sighed. "I miss Steve."

When the other man started to talk again, the soldier silenced him with a hard glare and turned so he faced the wall. He didn't speak again for the next five days. He ate from the stash of dried food once a day, used the toilet when necessary, and ignored everything else. By day nine of being in the chamber, the other men were wild eyed and had been whispering into the microphones and mirrored portholes. The war stories had stopped days ago, replaced by them trying to turn each other in. The Soldier remembered that Hodge had tried to ask him if he knew what happened to the Captain on their first day. 

He rolled onto his side and grabbed for the man, staring at him hard. "What happened to the Captain, Hodge? What happened to Steve?"

Hodge gave him a slightly manic smile. "Sergeant, the Captain died about five years ago. Crashed a Hydra plane right into the Arctic even though Stark said later he could have landed it easily. It was two days after you fell from the train. Everyone's pretty sure it was a suicide." He let out a wheezing laugh and ripped free of The Soldier's hold, jumping to his feet and running back and forth around the room, screaming at the top of his lungs.

The Soldier sat very still for several long minutes, not breathing, not even really seeing. Steve was dead. Steve was dead and it was a suicide. Steve had killed himself right after Bucky had died. 

And if Bucky was dead and The Soldier was Bucky, that meant The Soldier was actually dead. He was dead and this was hell and Steve was dead too but he wasn't here because he was too good a person to go to hell. The torture and screaming were all part of hell and he was dead. 

The Soldier tucked himself into a corner and ignored everyone else in the chamber. There was more screaming, and then papers smeared with feces pasted onto the glass of the peepholes and the screaming stopped. The Soldier laid on the cot and contemplated sleep that would not come. If this was hell and he was dead then it did not matter if he didn't complete the mission. Yet he could not let himself fail. 

When the other men began ripping at the skin of his chest and thighs, he let them, watching listlessly as they stuffed chunks of his flesh and muscle into the drain at the center of the chamber. When the men ripped out their own internal organs, he closed his eyes and wished for another death but he did not sleep. 

When the announcement came that they were draining the chamber of gas to inspect the microphones and one of them would gain freedom, it was The Soldier who answered back with, "We no longer want to be freed." There was no freedom in hell. 

He vaguely registered the begging for the gas to be returned and the screaming of the handlers when they saw the contents of the chamber. When they bent over him and whispered, "Dobroye utro, soldat." and he responded with a weak, "Gotov vypolnit'.", they announced him dead and carted him from the chamber. He was injected with paralysis and put in a plane to Siberia. 

At the medical facility, there was much debate on what to do with him while he healed as the gas had rendered anesthetics useless. He stared at the handlers and whispered, "Please give me the gas again. Don't wanna forget...Stevie." The longer he was out of the chamber, the hazier the memories got. 

And to his wonder, they did as he asked. This time he was alone in the room. The memories came back and The Soldier's body healed. When he was free of injury, The Soldier was wiped, though it did not work. And when asked if he remembered who he was, all he could say was, "I have not forgotten so easily. I am you. I am the madness that lurks within you all, begging to be free at every moment in your deepest animal mind. I am what you hide from in your beds every night. I am what you sedate into silence and paralysis when you go to the nocturnal haven where I cannot tread." The electricity descended on him again. "So nearly free."

The Soldier forgot.

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me on  
> Twitter: buckycurls  
> Tumblr: angstplums


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